Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Just in time for the holidays, a reader has sent along more news
about the storybook lives of SEIU’s top officials.

Remember Mitch Ackerman?

In 2009, Andy Stern
appointed him to be one of SEIU’s six “Executive Vice Presidents” (the highest
positions inside the Purple Palace after SEIU's President and
Secretary-Treasurer). Stern also awarded Ackerman a $300,000-a-year salary.

Everything was going swimmingly for Mitch until 2010,
when Stern resigned as SEIU's president and Ackerman made the fatal mistake of
throwing his support behind Anna Burger in the ensuing succession battle. That's when Mary Kay Henryaxed
Ackerman.

But don’t cry for Mitch.

Mitch relaxes in a hammock at his ranch

Since then, he’s gone to a French culinary school in New
York City, where he stayed chez Andy Stern (who prolly has a phat apartment
funded by his billionaire sugar daddy, Ron
Perelman).

Next, when Ackerman took a vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he spied a ranch for sale, which he bought and now runs as a bed-and-breakfast
inn.

Here’s what Ackerman says about his ranch:

This ranch was just
what the doctor ordered to pull us out of our heads and into the hands-on world
of renovation, restoration, culinary experimentation, and forced relaxation for
everyone who passes through our door.

Mitch in the hot tub

Mitch’s blog bubbles with quotes from chefs like Alice Waters
as well as reports like this one:

Out of the kitchen
flew dish after dish: lamb meatballs with homemade harrissa, tortilla Española
with Romesco sauce, herbed gigante beans, pizzas with three cheese and truffle
oil, one with onion and heirloom tomato, and one with prosciutto, fresh tomato
sauce and kale.The cocktails did not
disappoint either.

Speaking of cocktails, Ackerman appears to be particularly fond of them. His blog features recipes for cocktails with names like “the
Sazerac,” “the Ward 8,” and homemade liqueurs.

Mitch also offers really important advice:

A photo of Mitch's bar

I recommend these
tasty riffs on the Manhattan to make two cocktails, for several reasons. First,
it is always more fun to drink with a buddy. Second, rather than getting bombed
by your first drink, you may want to enjoy several different beverages over the
course of an evening. The second recipe is especially large, so don’t hog it
all for yourself – share.

Hmmm. Share.

It looks like Ackerman has joined the long line of SEIU's top officials who almost inevitably make a soft landing after being ousted... even as America's workers struggle against massive unemployment, foreclosures, greedy corporations, and a plutocratic class that's increasingly out of touch with reality.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

On Thursday, SEIU-UHW’s Dave
Regan filed a third statewide ballot initiative in California. Tasty’s sources
say the initiative -- like the first two -- is driven by hidden objectives that
are miles apart from Regan’s public explanations.

According to a press
statement, Regan introduced the third initiative to boost wages for homecare
workers in the publicly funded “In-Home Support Services” (IHSS) program.

What’s really going on?

First, Regan is trying to use the initiative to entice
SEIU-UHW’s 65,000 homecare workers to help gather the 1.1 million signatures needed
to place his first two initiatives on the ballot. Regan will tell homecare
workers: “Do you want a wage increase? Well, start knocking on doors. Oh, by
the way, we’d like you to collect signatures for these other two measures at
the same time.”

Secondly, Regan plans to use the initiative to win
support for himself in next year’s internal officer elections at SEIU-UHW.
Regan’s numerous contract concessions and massive dues hike have made him
especially unpopular among the union’s hospital and Kaiser Permanente workers,
where workers have launched “Dump Dave” campaigns. As a result, Regan needs a
way to recruit votes from SEIU-UHW’s 65,000 homecare workers in advance of next year's internal
elections.

Does Regan intend to actually run a real campaign to pass
the initiative in November of 2014?

Highly doubtful. Here’s why.

First, it would cost millions and millions of dollars.

Second, Regan’s IHSS initiative is seriously half-baked. For example, Regan hasn’t even organized support for the
third initiative from other SEIU local unions… let alone non-SEIU unions and consumer organizations.

Last week’s press announcement was notable for the total and complete absence of SEIU Local 6434 and AFSCME. These unions represent
far more IHSS workers in California than does SEIU-UHW -- with Local 6434
reportedly representing 140,000 IHSS workers in Los Angeles County alone.

And SEIU Local 6434 has additional importance. Its
president -- Laphonza Butler -- also serves
as the president of the SEIU California State Council, which manages SEIU’s
statewide political resources.

Tasty hears there’s open feuding between Regan and Laphonza Butler,
who played a key role in
axing Dave Kieffer from his job
as Executive Director of the State Council. After his ouster, Kieffer quickly took
a job from Regan.

So what's gonna happen to the IHSS initiative?

Tasty predicts that Regan will jettison the initiative
if he wins re-election in next spring’s officer elections... but only after
squeezing every last signature from SEIU-UHW’s 65,000 homecare
workers and cynically using the fake initiative for his own personal political advantage.

The timing of this propaganda offensive is quite comical. Just two weeks ago, Kaiser announced
third-quarter profits of more than a half billion dollars!

In fact, Kaiser has pocketed $2.2 billion in profits during
the first nine months of 2013, according to its
recent press release. And since 2009, Kaiser piled more than $10.9
billion of profits into its bank accounts!

Hmm… sounds like a perfect time for Kaiser’s workers to
make painful sacrifices so that Robert Pearl, Bernard Tyson and the rest of Kaiser’s Bosses can keep on grinnin'
from ear to ear!

Monday, November 18, 2013

As Dave Regan tries
to use ballot initiatives to wrangle a
sweetheart deal from California’s hospital bosses, a reader has sent along an
interesting article about Regan’s prior ballot adventures in Ohio. (See the article below.)

In 2003, Regan launched a ballot scheme while he was president of SEIU 1199 Ohio... and suffered defeat. In fact, the Ohio Elections Commission reprimanded Regan for
lying to voters. (Shocking!)

Here’s what happened.

At the time, Cuyahoga
County officials were trying to renew a county tax that funds health and
human services for the poor. Ohioans were suffering under a terrible economy as
well as budget cuts from state and federal governments. The county’s health and
human services tax was critically important, according to press accounts, because it raised $80 million a year for safety-net services like foster care for abused children, health care
and meals for low-income seniors, and mental health services for the poor.

During the run-up to the election, Regan decided to try to
capitalize on the county’s desperate situation. How?

Regan threatened county
officials that unless they permitted SEIU to unionize their workforce, he would
submarine the tax by waging an aggressive campaign to defeat it at the ballot
box.

Genius move, right? What better way to improve the union's public support than to campaign for the elimination of safety-net services for foster children, working-class seniors, and mental health patients!

After county officials refused to bite on Regan's deal, Regan reportedly spent a half million dollars of SEIU members’ dues money on TV ads, glossy mailers and newspaper ads to attack the
tax and those no-good foster kids. Regan peppered SEIU's "voter education” materials with blatant lies, which got his ass reprimanded by the Ohio Elections
Commission, according to a May 6, 2003 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Regan also succeeded in alienating the
rest of the labor movement, which unanimously opposed SEIU’s
position.

On election day, the County's voters approved the tax... and Regan
officially became the town idiot.

Here's an editorial -- entitled "Bald-Faced Lies" -- from the editorial board
of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It includes language like this:

The SEIU is
purposefully trying to rip an $80 million hole in Cuyahoga County's safety net
by denying basic human services for needy children, the working poor and those
in desperate need of mental health treatment. For that, those involved in this
campaign to defeat Issue 15 have forever earned this community's enmity…

...the SEIU and the
out-of-towners campaigning to inflict further suffering upon the people of this
community who can least bear it… bald-faced lie… falsehoods and fabrications…

Friday, November 15, 2013

Today, a group of 160 workers at Corizon Health in the San
Francisco Bay Area voted 107 to 5 in a landslide NLRB victory for
NUHW!

The workers care for thousands of inmates at Alameda County’s
jail -- apparently it's the fifth largest jail in the U.S. The workers include RNs, LVNs,
Medical Assistants, Physician Assistants, LCSWs, Nurse Practitioners and
Medical Records Clerks, according to NUHW.

In August of this year, 80 percent of the workers
signed a petition to decertify SEIU-UHW so they could join NUHW. Their move to dump SEIU-UHW came after purple officials negotiated
cuts to workers’ benefits and were basically AWOL when workers needed help.

Once the NLRB scheduled the election, SEIU-UHW ran for cover by withdrawing from the election because it had zero support from workers.

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